I'm a Liar Like My Friends Said
by badgerjaw
Summary: Even when your friends have passed on, it's still considered a sin to lie about them. Rated M for Graphic Violence.


**I'm a Liar Like My Friends Said**

He stood in the middle of the crossroads, the darkness seeming to wrap itself around his narrow shoulders like a silken cape. She can only make out the glint of his eyes in the waning fingernail moon, which also played on the blade of her cleaver. He manifests as a stop sign, a stop signal at a busy intersection, the only thing directing the traffic that could lead her to life or death.

He moved slowly and deliberately, slices of silvery light bending over the curves of the dented baseball bat as he raised it to point demandingly at her. She felt his malice and trembled under it.

"I'm not gonna let you leave Hinamizawa as my enemy," he said.

She knew. Paranoia pulsed through him and powered the bat in his hands, fueling the suspicions that all of his friends sought his death. As far as she knew, she was the only one left for him to beat into the ground.

Rena didn't want to die.

"Keiichi--"

"Don't you dare feed me lies!" he growled firmly. Shadows shifted over his face as it contorted itself into a mask that betrayed nothing but the purest hate. He crept closer, but she remained rooted to her spot in fear, his face melting her resistance down to the barest minimum. The end of the bat skimmed the flesh of her cheek when it could reach across the distance separating her and Keiichi.

"I'm not goin--"

Quite suddenly she found herself pinned to the ground, the breath knocked completely from her lungs, his knee digging incessantly into her arms, and the bat resting fully across her throat. As her skin warmed the cold, blood-stained metal, he draped his arms over the ends of it, applying enough pressure to make her breathing labored. His breath puffed hotly over her face.

"Swear to me, Rena," he said.

"W-wha...?" she stammered.

"Swear to tell the truth by letting go of the cleaver."

Instead of loosening their hold, her fingers tightened like clamps around the wooden handle.

"Keiichi, please."

"Rena, do as I say."

"I'm scared--"

"LET GO OF THE DAMN CLEAVER OR I'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO BE SCARED ABOUT!"

Her fingers let go then, and her cleaver's comforting weight flew far from her grasp. A whimper escaped her lips as his eyes fixed themselves on hers with all the intensity of a coyote eying a trapped rabbit. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her blood beat an erratic tattoo in her ears. By this time, she became sure that it wouldn't be Keiichi who killed her, but the sheer weight of fear crushing down on her.

"Now, will you answer me honestly?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Good." The weight on the bat lightened and fresh air filled her lungs. "Why are you trying to leave?"

"You... you killed Mii-chan and Shii-chan--"

"How do you know that?"

"You killed them right outside my house!" she shrieked. "Why? They were just coming by to see if I was all right, with my father being gone--"

The bat dug deep into her throat and almost instantaneously she felt her face turn a bright red as all source of air was denied to her. Her body convulsed beneath his, trying in vain to shake his wrath loose. Still he held fast, not even using his full weight to suffocate her.

Rena didn't want to die like this. She didn't want to die struggling for breath with saliva trickling out of the corners of her mouth, the edges of her vision going dark, her head pounding as if it were about to explode from the pressure building in her veins.

It was such an ugly way to die.

What seemed like hours later, the bat released her just as she began to slip into unconsciousness. Her body immediately began to swallow the air greedily, but her brain continued to shut itself down to regain its equilibrium, despite all of the blood rushing back to spur it into life. Keiichi, like her blood, would not have her black out like this.

He slapped her hard across the face repeatedly. Stinging sensations shocked her brain back into dutiful activity, the worst sort of traitor.

"Rena, you promised not to lie," he spat.

Hot tears leaked out from in between her eyelids.

"Weren't they coming over to decide the way you should kill me?"

Rena had always been a fast learner, so she nodded yes and suppressed the sobs welling painfully in the depths of her chest.

"Were Rika and Satoko also in on it?"

She nodded again. A sob escaped and it hurt. It didn't hurt as much as lying did, but she was the only one in danger now. His question confirmed that he had indeed killed Satoko and Rika before Mion and Shion, that she was the only one left. No one would be hurt if she lied. He couldn't hurt them if he discovered her lies.

"How did they plan on killing me?"

"T-tor... t-torture..." She almost choked on her tongue.

"All of them agreed on that?"

She nodded once again. Sobs and tears escaped her freely, which he seemed to take as her shame of her alleged murderous premeditations, because he freed her arms. Pins and needles plucked sluggishly within them, but she hadn't the strength to flex them to get the blood moving more quickly. Instead, they lay limp at her sides like over-cooked noodles.

"What about you, Rena? How did you think I should die?"

"K-K-Keiichi--"

"Ah, ah, ah."

The bat pressed against her throat again.

"Quick-ckly," she stammered. "P-p... painlessly."

"Is that the truth?"

"I swear," she sobbed and she felt Hell pounding in her heart.

Seconds ticked by in silence, marked by the double-time of her heart drumming against the bars of her ribcage. His eyes continued to glint as the fingernail moon rose steadily into the night, piercing deep into her soul, reading her face for lies tracing the bruise blossoming on her neck. He had lifted the bat so that he leaned on it taking most of his weight off of her body for some blessed amount of time. What he was doing with the other hand, she did not know, but she did feel featherlight touches caress her cheek and neck as if beholding the face of someone beloved. Those might or might not have been the creations of her exhausted brain.

As suddenly as she had been pinned, she felt herself be pulled to her unsteady feet and supported against him.

"Rena, you're my only ally," he said. They inched forward, hindered by her dizzy steps. He bent and picked something up. "Can I trust you with your cleaver? I'd leave it behind but we might need it as we run away."

She nodded and clumsily touched her pinky finger to his in promise. Satisfied, he pressed the shaft into her hand and they continued on the road to Okinomiya.

Soon she was able to walk on her own again, albeit slowly. He muttered things about needing to leave the area before the bodies of their friends were discovered. Ooishi's name could be made out in between curses and epithets. Rena only listened with half a mind, paying attention long enough to realize that a car was coming and they needed to hide in the bushes and trees alongside the road.

She could only dedicate her attention to the Hell that pulsed like poison in her veins...

_(sin)_

... whispering things in her ears... or in the fingers that clutched the cleaver as a child might clutch a favorite teddy or blanket. It seemed as if her entire body had been transformed into an ear, for sounds she had never been conscious of before made themselves known near her ankles, her elbows, her stomach...

_(sinner)_

There it was again! This time whispered at the juncture of her hipbone and thigh, quiet and firm. And she stopped in her tracks to listen as if caught in the evening light, listening to the chorus of cicadas serenading the coming night.

_(sinner)_

"Rena?"

Keiichi looked back her, concern lacing the features of his face.

"Rena? You okay?"

_(liar)_

"Rena?"

She swayed slightly on the spot, lulled by the fell whispers in her body. The whispers sounded familiar, like Rika and Shion...

_(sinner... liar)_

... and Mion and Satoko...

_(liar... sinner)_

"Rena? Rena? Do you need to get to the clinic?" He moved closer to her, his very existence becoming one of worry. "If we do, we'd have to kill Irie to co--"

"No," she said, holding up her empty hand as if to silence him. She glared at him for interrupting this maddening concert. Her concert, the one they made for her, not for him. "No, shut up."

"Rena?"

_(liar)_

"Keiichi," she interrupted. "I need to tell you something."

"What?"

_(Liar!)_

"I lied."

"What?"

_(SINNER!!)_

The cleaver sliced cleanly through his left shoulder, spewing hot blood over her as the blade severed multiple arteries of major importance. With how fast the blood splattered the road, she believed she cut into his heart, which was probably why he dropped so fast. The bat clanged loudly as his fingers let it fall and the cleaver, the point of which snagged in his shoulder-blade, ripped free of his flesh and bone and flipped off the road, coming to rest in some bushes.

Rena giggled. The chorus of accusations continued in a pianissimo. Keiichi died within half a minute of pained twitches and unintelligible mutterings.

Rena giggled again, longer and louder. And a third time. And a fourth, until she was laughing in complete abandon, clawing at her neck and stumbling over herself and Keiichi's corpse. More blood dripped onto the road as her bruised neck started to resemble something a fox might have torn into.

She laughed and clawed into the night.

By the time a complaint to the police had been made about the racket had been made and the police arrived at that particular stretch of road, Rena too lay dead, her face frozen in a combination of frenzied laughter and intense pain.


End file.
